The Australian: A 'work of genius'

The Australian: Westpac commercial a small work of genius.

News

25 August 2018

By Greg Sheridan | The Australian.

[excerpt]: In the last US presidential election cycle the best commercial was run on behalf of Bernie Sanders, who lost the Democratic primary to Hillary Clinton. It used the soundtrack of Simon and Garfunkel’s America, with its lovely chorus line: “They’ve all come to look for America.”

The ad was unnarrated. As the lyrics play, the vision ranges across honest Americans going innocently about their pursuits in coffee shops and city streets. They are ethnically divers­e, but that is only incidental.

Then the vision shifts to scenes of farmers carting bales of hay and walking through their fields. Almost anywhere in the West, and certainly in the US, and in Australia too, rural life readily signifies decency.

Such is the case in the most brilliant TV commerci­al I have seen for many years. Westpac has an ad for its services helping people with deceased estates. It is really the most brilliant one-minute feature film, an exquisite, almost flawless, act of graceful, compressed story­telling. Briefer is better is almost always true in art…